“It’s a Disaster. It’s a Nightmare.” Is a Civil War Brewing Inside Fox News?

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace during the final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in October, 2016.

DAMON WINTER/The New York Times/Redux.

“No one is missing her anymore,” one Fox News insider told me recently. This person was referring, of course, to Megyn Kelly, the network’s former star who left for NBC earlier this year. Kelly’s move may have signaled a rightward lurch for NBC, which appears to be coming to terms with its place in our new Trumpian reality. (MSNBC also recently hired Kelly’s former colleague Greta Van Susteren.) But the move may be more significant for her former stomping ground, Fox News, which appears to be in the midst of its own regressive (if highly rated) culture change. During Kelly’s reign, “it was always all about Megyn,” one former Fox colleague told me. Now, it’s all about the Old White Men.

It’s worth recalling that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Roger Ailes’s departure last summer in the wake of a tawdry sexual-harassment scandal seemed to herald a new era inside the Fox News bunker. At the time, Rupert Murdoch’s heirs, 21st Century Fox C.E.O. James and Chairman Lachlan, were eager to embrace a more transparent and evolved future. Soon after Gretchen Carlson waged her accusations of sexual harassment, the sons launched an internal investigation to be handled by the law firm Paul, Weiss. After Ailes left, 21st Century Fox paid Carlson a $20 million settlement and offered her an unusual apology that appeared to herald a post-loofah, post-leg-cam era. “We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve,” the statement noted. (Ailes has repeatedly and vociferously denied all allegations.)

But perhaps the most important element in the younger Murdochs’ agenda was retaining Kelly, Fox’s second-most highly rated anchor, who alleged that she, too, had been a victim of Ailes’s harassment. Kelly, after all, became the journalistic breakout star of the 2016 presidential campaign. And with a presumptive Hillary Clinton presidency, and a younger generation of Murdochs in charge, Kelly appeared to be an avatar of an enlightened, post-Ailes culture at Fox News. The younger Murdochs tabled a huge $25 million a year offer and asked Kelly to make a decision quickly.

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Kelly, however, had other ideas. At the time, she was preparing to promote her book, Settle for More, in which she portrayed herself as something of a feminist hero through her spats with Trump, her alleged sexual harassment by Ailes, as well as other stories from her childhood and career. Kelly also seemed to engage in battles with her male colleagues Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Meanwhile, she appeared on Dr. Phil, Live with Kelly, and on CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS This Morning—the last of which ended with co-host Gayle King asking her, “And you plan to leave Fox when?” (Ailes’s lawyer Susan Estrichdenied the claims in Kelly’s book to The Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple.)

Kelly’s attempt to elevate herself might have worked at another news network. But Fox News prides itself on having a strong formula (leggy young women and angry old men) that diminishes the need, and appetite, for strong personalities. Inside the Fox News bunker, jealous colleagues took to calling Kelly “Me-Again.” Rival Bill O’Reilly indicated that Kelly was making his network “look bad.” Before too long, Fox News seemed like a much less hospitable place for the Valkyrie Kelly. Meanwhile, the stunning election of Trump appeared to throw a wrench in the younger Murdochs’ plan for sun and light. Perhaps a younger, more progressive attitude wasn’t the right idea, after all.

Soon after Kelly left to pursue a more mainstream future at NBC, Fox News returned to its natural state. Rupert Murdoch, who stepped in to run the network himself, hand-selected the former conservative wunderkind Tucker Carlson to take over for Kelly. Now, Fox News’s prime-time hours from 8 to 11 P.M. are entirely peopled by white, male commentators: O’Reilly, Carlson, and Hannity. As Andy Lack recently noted at an industry event, the network feels more like “state broadcasting” than it ever did under Ailes. And the formula is working. Carlson, with his perpetually furrowed brow, is drawing higher ratings than Kelly did during her tenure.

Fox News, in fact, is at the center of the news cycle on a daily basis—a feat that not even Ailes achieved. Hannity, an early proponent of Trump’s birther conspiracy theory, recently called for Trump to remove the remaining U.S. attorneys who were leftover from the Obama administration just days before Trump did that very thing. (If there’s anyone who can channel Trump’s anger, it’s the mixed-martial-arts enthusiast Hannity, who last year brandished a gun at his colleague Juan Williams, according to a CNN report.) More recently, President Trump cited Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano in his joint press conference with Angela Merkel in order to justify his statements that President Obama had used Britain’s spy agency GCHQ to tap Trump’s phones, a statement that enraged the British government. “That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox,” Trump said. “And so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox.”

But Fox News’s return to normalcy has not been without its divisions. The Napolitano affair, in particular, has demonstrated the dissent that exists between the network’s bloviators and its more earnest news personalities. Despite its appearance to the outside world as a monolithic force on the right, the network operates internally with a distinction between its news side and its commentary side. Shepard Smith, Chris Wallace, and Bret Baier, among others, are news anchors. O’Reilly, Hannity and Carlson are commentators.

Baier, for instance, distanced himself from the comments. So did Smith. who noted, “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop.” “You have to read into the way Shep said what he said. And why Bret dealt with it the way he did,” the insider told me. (A spokesperson for Fox News did not provide comment for this story.)

“The key thing Judge Napolitano did was to say ‘Fox News is reporting that . . .,’ and he can’t say that,” this insider told me. “That breaks the trust, and you saw what it cost him,” the insider told me. (Napolitano has been pulled from the network.) “He is not a reporter and knows he’s not a reporter.” This person noted bluntly that the judge’s comments, and Trump’s parroting of them, have created an internal headache: “It’s a disaster. It’s a nightmare.”

Despite the headaches for the journalists at Fox News, the main risk to the Murdochs (other than credibility) is the effect the backlash could have on their proposed deal to purchase outright Sky News, which was scuttled once before in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal. It could also call unwanted attention to a number of deeper cultural problems that lie beneath the network’s thriving ratings. The New York Times’s Emily Steelreported recently that Fox News settled for more than $2.5 million with a former contributor, Tamara Holder, after she reported that Francisco Cortes, the vice president for Fox News Latino, had tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. Holder reported the conduct to executives at Fox News on October 21, which investigated the allegation and fired Cortes days later. Holder left Fox News when her contract expired on January 1 of this year.

She is only the latest woman that 21st Century Fox has settled with in the months since Ailes left the company. Carlson’s settlement remains the most high profile, but others, including one with Juliet Huddy, who accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment, are a reminder that allegations of sexual harassment at Fox News were unlikely limited to a single personality. (“I am no longer surprised by anything I hear about male behavior at Fox News,” one insider told me). O’Reilly was also accused of sexual harassment in 2004 by Andrea Mackrissettled with the network for a reported multi-million-dollar settlement. (O’Reilly has denied all allegations against him.)

Indeed, even the young Murdochs may be fearful of exactly what lies at the bottom of the Fox News bunker. Last summer, the 21st Century Fox internal investigation into Ailes’s behavior was narrowly focused. Paul, Weiss, according to a source close to the investigation, never expanded to look deeply into phone and e-mail records throughout the company to unearth evidence of a culture of sexual harassment. Instead, the Murdoch sons chose to move quickly and decisively against Ailes, and hoped to allow the employees of Fox News to return to work in a new, transparent culture. But the company, which according to a spokesperson “has been in communication with the U.S. attorney’s office for months,” faces a Justice Department investigation into Fox News’s settlements under Ailes that may have involved business practices that violated the law. (The 21st Century Fox spokesperson declined to comment beyond acknowledging that the company had been in discussions with the U.S. attorney’s office.)

Those discussions are continuing despite the dismissal of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney general for the Southern District of New York, and the rumors that Ailes’s own personal attorney, Marc Mukasey, is on the short list to replace Bharara. Whether Mukasey is appointed to the position or not, one thing seems clear given the current administration, according to one industry insider close to the scenario. “There will never be an investigation into Fox and it’s an absolute scandal,” this person said.

Meanwhile, over at NBC, Kelly’s arrival is already ruffling feathers. Tamron Hall, the popular co-host of the Today show’s nine A.M. hour, left NBC after learning that she was losing her spot as anchor to make room for Kelly in an as-yet-unidentified role. Savannah Guthrie, the now seemingly vulnerable host of Today, who learned about Kelly’s arrival while on maternity leave, is back on air next to her co-host Matt Lauer. Kelly may have escaped the clutches of the Fox News bunker. But NBC has its own minefields.